What is Scribd?

Scribd is the largest social publishing company in the world, the Website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents. On Scribd, you can quickly and easily turn nearly any file—including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel—into a Web document and share it with the world.

One thing I discovered while trying to figure out what Scribd is all about is that it's not so much a retailer like the Amazon Kindle store or Smashwords as it is a hosting site. They host a lot more than just e-books: brochures, magazines, catalogs, government docs, illustrations, maps, slideshows, recipes, spreadsheets, etc. They do, however, host e-books, otherwise this entry would not be finding it's way into my series.

A couple of good places to visit to learn more about Scribd or to just keep up on the latest happenings there is via their blog and at their Getting Started forum. The Scribd Support Desk would be your first place to seek help.

How much does Scribd charge?

If you're planning on selling your content on Scribd, then you'll need to hand over some of your sales. Scribd charges a 20% consignment fee for each item sold plus an additional transaction fee of $0.25 ($0.40 for DRM-protected content).

So, to break that down: if I charge $0.99 for my e-book like I do on Amazon and Smashwords, Scribd is going to take $0.45 of that (that's $0.99 * 0.2 + $0.25; you make $0.54). That works out to Scribd getting 45% of the sale. To compare, Amazon charges 65% and Smashwords, 42%.

Scribd doesn't mess around with special formatting requirements or conversions like Amazon or Smashwords; the above formats are what you upload and what readers download.

How Scribd Organizes Content

Here's what the Scribd home page looks like:

By clicking "Explore" in the top navigation bar, you'll see Scribd's categories that they use to organize content:

Presumably if you're giving away your content for free your e-book would fall into the "Books" category at the top. If you plan to charge, then it should fall under the last, "Scribd Store" (I haven't uploaded any content to Scribd yet, so this is a learning experience for me, too).

One thing I do not like at all is that you cannot drill down any further than the following sub-categories under Books:

Clicking on "Fiction", my primary focus as a writer, brings up all fiction titles. This is not terribly helpful as it mixes in all genres. In other words, if I want to look through just fantasy or science fiction titles… well, you can't. Not without also wading through a lot of other content (most of which I found were steamy romance novels).

You can pare down results a little by selecting language, length, file types, and if content is free or for purchase:

Still, it would be nice to have a finer grained view into fiction titles in order to focus on just what I'm most interested in. Also, I see this as being a major hurdle that will probably keep potential buyers from ever seeing my e-book. It's bad enough to be lost amidst a sea of a specific genre, but to try to find something amidst the larger category of fiction… good luck.

Publishing with Scribd

Of course the first step is to sign up for a Scribd account. I'll assume you can handle that part and move on to uploading content.

There's a specially colored button on the navigation bar that says "Upload". That's what we want. Clicking it displays some information that asks, "Want to upload works to sell?":

If you're planning to give your content away, look no further than the "Upload" button. However, if you plan to sell your e-book, you'll need to upload it to the Scribd Store. Following the "You'll find the Scribd Store…" link gets us going.

Before I jump into the upload process, here's some helpful links to assist in preparing and selling your content:

Two takeaways from the "Preparing your content" link for me had to do with format and cover design. For formatting, Scribd recommends:

…uploading your document in PDF format. The PDF format was designed to maintain a documents look and feel across different computers. Word and PowerPoint...weren't. While Scribd accepts uploads as Word docs or PowerPoint presentations, the simple truth is that your document has a better chance of retaining your exact fonts and layout if you upload a PDF.

I'm OK with this as I use PDF as my primary distribution format already. Also, most (all?) e-readers support PDF natively (i.e., no conversion required). Even Amazon jumped on the PDF bandwagon.

For cover images, Scribd was where I learned of the "use big fonts" tip so that when shrunk down the text on my title is still readable.

So here's the "Publish to Sell" screen:

Clicking "Click to Choose Files" brings up a standard "Select files…" dialog. I selected my e-book and, after some quick edits and selections, came up with this:

I tried setting a price of $0.99, but Scribd modified it to $1.00. Also, as you can see, you have some "delivery" options. By default, people who buy your content can view it on Scribd. You then choose to make that the one and only way readers can view your content, or select "Downloadable PDF" to allow readers to download in PDF format, or choose the DRM option, which allows readers to download your content but view it only in Adobe Digital Editions. Think of ADE as e-reader software with a lot of restrictions (no printing, for one, though this may be configurable based on DRM settings embedded in the document; I don't know).

I went with the middle option. I'm not big on DRM and certainly don't want readers restricted to only viewing my content on the Scribd web site.

Uploading only takes a few seconds. Next, you're presented with a "Copyright Verification" page. No problem there. Last, a page where you can categorize your work:

Pretty standard stuff. The "Discoverability Rating" is defined as:

I added just the two tags, chose my category and (very limited) sub-category, and wound up with a rating of 'High'.

That's it. You can now view/purchase my e-book, The Hall of the Wood, on Scribd here.

Some lessons learned

Given that this is the first time I'd gone through this process with Scribd I was bound to find a few things I should have done differently. For one, my e-book displays as:

No cover image. Humph. I'll have to fix that.

Also, this was right after page 5:

Scribd has an option when you're uploading to choose what potential readers can sample. I went with the default, which seems to randomly select which pages not to display. I'd rather allow the reader to sample the first so many pages, so I'll have to go back and fix that, too.

Conclusion

Publishing to Scribd is by far the simplest so far of the online retailers I've taken a look at. They also pay royalties comparable to Smashwords, both of which are higher than Amazon. Since the main objective here is to attract readers. Scribd seems like another good outlet in which to accomplish that.

Unlike Amazon, which I talked about in the previous post in this series, I know next to nothing about Smashwords. That, therefore, is the point of this post: to do some research into what Smashwords is and what it can offer as an electronic self-publishing platform.

What is Smashwords?

Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.

Key takeaways from that include "DRM-free" and "multi-format". We'll see which formats below.

Founded in February of 2008 by Mark Coker, Smashwords is a place for serious writers to showcase and sell their literary work. Unlike Amazon's Kindle store, free is an option; you do not have to charge anything if you do not want.

I question how up-to-date this formula is because, as you'll see below, you actually make far less than 85% based on the sales breakdown provided when you set a price for a your e-book. Still, on a $0.99 e-book, you can expect to make $0.56, or 57% of the asking price. The rest goes to "billing fees" and Smashwords. See "Pricing and Sampling" below for more info.

Contrast that with Amazon's 35% payout and Smashwords still looks like a pretty good deal.

Who owns the rights after publishing to Smashwords?

From the Smashwords' About page:

The author retains all ownership rights to their works, and is still free to publish their work elsewhere if they choose. Authors can remove their works from Smashwords at any time (although they cannot take back works that have already been purchased or sampled by readers).

The Smashwords Storefront

Upon visiting the Smashwords home page you can immediately begin browsing e-books:

At left are a number of choices for narrowing your browsing:

Or you have other options at top:

Each book is listed as:

With much of the information you might expect, as well as ratings (if readers took the time to do so) and reviews:

I'm a huge believer in the ratings system for online retailers and especially publishers. It's the single best way (though not fool-proof) of judging quality.

Author Page

Each author who publishes on Smashwords gets an author page which includes bio information, web site, blog, twitter account, etc. It's much more comprehensive and progressive than what Amazon offers in their own version of this. The author page is, of course, the place where potential readers can find out more about you.

Since I'd already signed up for a Smashwords account, I went ahead and filled in the information for my own author page:

You'll notice at the bottom it says "You have not published any books". So I haven't. I think I will remedy that.

Publishing with Smashwords

While uploading an e-book to Smashwords appears to be pretty straightforward, there are a lot of steps:

Step 1: Title and Synopsis

Easy enough since I already have a synopsis from having published in the Kindle store, and I also keep such information on my fiction page. Smashwords limits this to 400 characters, though, so I'll have to trim.

Here's my completed step 1:

Step 2: Pricing and Sampling

A. Pricing

Pricing is simple enough: this is where you set a price for your e-book. Smashwords provides a nice breakdown of where the money goes. For example, on a $0.99 sale price:

This bears some explaining.

"Non-affiliate sales" are sales made by a reader visiting Smashwords directly or through, perhaps, a link from your site and making a purchase.

Affiliate sales, like Amazon's Affiliates Program, is where someone has posted a link to your e-book and made a sale that way. As you can see, the affiliate claims a piece of the pie.

Premium Catalog Retailers is best described by the information I found on Smashwords web site. Suffice to say it is another, possibly greater outlet for sales. Here is the description:

This new catalog is distributed to major online retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Sony, Fictionwise and other distribution outlets that have higher mechanical standards such as requiring quality book cover images, books with copyright pages, and other simple requirements outlined below. If you're a serious author or publisher, you want your books included in Smashwords Premium Catalog.

B. Sampling

The second part of this step is sampling, where you specify how much of your e-book can be downloaded for free (i.e., previewed). I went with the default:

Step 3: Categories

Easy enough:

Step 4: Tags

I went with the tags shown:

Step 5: eBook Formats

I researched some of the different e-book formats previously, and I find it encouraging that Smashwords offers so many formats: epub, lrf, mobi, pdb, pdf, rtf, and txt. What this means for readers is that they have maximum selection, and can download their favorite (or their e-reader's) format and not get "locked in" to one particular format (like Amazon is doing with the Kindle, which only reads azw files Amazon supports PDF natively, as well as more basic formats like TXT, but in terms of eBooks AZW is still king when it comes to eBook formats and how well your eBook will look on the device).

The default is all formats; I left mine as available on each.

Step 6: Cover Image

Step 7: Select File of Book to Publish

Smashwords lets you upload e-books in .doc or .rtf format (they do the conversion into the many e-book formats for you). If you want inclusion in the Premium Catalog, you'll want to follow the basic guidelines found here.

Step 8: Publish

This is the final and easiest step: just press "Publish" and you're done. You'll see a "Your book is now converting" page as Smashwords grinds through the e-book conversion process:

It takes a while…

Note that I did encounter some formatting errors once the process was complete: (1) I'd forgotten I have a table on my title page which makes the formatting a little nicer looking (Smashwords does not allow tables), (2) I had forgotten to put "Smashwords Edition" on my copyright page, and (3) it was suggested I "normalize" all font sizes to just one, with '12' being considered optimal. I corrected each of these items, updated (the update process is slightly more streamlined than the initial submission process), and everything was fine thereafter.

Now, I see my e-book listed under "Newest":

As a final step, I submitted my e-book for inclusion in the Premium Catalog. This is what might just get your e-book into the storefronts of Amazon, Sony, and Barnes & Noble.

Conclusion

While that may have seemed like a long process… it was. Some of it was lessons learned, though, while some of it I was able to breeze through since I'd already done most of the leg-work. Your experience may vary. Unfortunately, I do have to now maintain two different online "source" versions of my e-book: one for Kindle and another for Smashwords, since they each have different requirements. Hopefully as a next step I'll be able to merge some of those differences and lessen the maintenance. Of course, once it's uploaded, it's uploaded, and hopefully doesn't require too many modifications.

First thing's first, though: publishing an e-book in the Kindle store is not exactly the same thing as having a traditional print book listed on their site. For one, anyone can publish to the Kindle store regardless of your current or previous publishing status (or lack thereof). The only requirement is that you have an e-book to sell (and that you own the rights to it).

With that, let's jump into it.

Amazon Kindle's Publishing Program

From the Kindle storefront you'll see a link at the left called "Publish on Kindle"

This is as good a starting place as any. From here, you can select the method by which you wish to upload content to the store (there are several methods depending on your relationship with Amazon) as well as a link to the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, a pdf I found only marginally helpful. It really digs into the nuances of formatting a document, though, including information like this:

Reminds of something out of one of my computer science texts. I didn't find this level of detail terribly helpful, and, in fact, it really isn't even necessary if you use Amazon's Digital Text Platform.

Digital Text Platform

Amazon's Digital Text Platform, or DTP, is the small or self-publisher's software platform of choice for listing content in the Kindle store. Don't expect anything fancy here: DTP is pretty barebones, but it does the job. With DTP, you can upload content (i.e., your e-book) to the Kindle store as well as download basic earnings reports once you've made some sales.

The publishing/upload process consists of (1) signing up for an Amazon account (if you do not already have one), (2) providing some details about your book (title, plot summary, etc.), (3) uploading a cover image, (4) uploading and previewing your entries, and (5) publishing.

I'll spend a little time going over each step, but also refer you to Amazon's Digital Text Platform Quick Start Guide, which provides a nice step-by-step approach to the five steps I listed (they go into a bit more detail than I intend to).

This information flows into the product listing page in the store once you've hit "publish" and looks like the usual Amazon product listing:

Step 3: Upload a cover image

It's a good idea to have a cover image to attract potential buyers and to hopefully help your work stand out from the rest. If you don't specify a cover image, Amazon will give you one that says "no image available". Not the best way to start a relationship with a potential reader. Personally, I'm much more likely to skip over a book that does not have one. Whether the cover itself is compelling or professional is another matter entirely, and goes beyond the scope of this post.

Here is the cover I went with for The Hall of the Wood:

And here it is when displayed in the store with the Kindle image attached:

Step 4: Upload and preview your content

This is where you upload and preview your e-book. It's a pretty simple interface: specify the location of your e-book, click "Upload", and you're done.

There is a note about file formats:

Note: For optimal results, please upload files in MS Word, HTML, or PRC format. Other formats such as PDF may lead to poor conversion quality. We are working to improve the conversion quality for PDF and other formats.

Once you've got all your information set, you can publish to the Kindle store by clicking "Publish":

Amazon has recently implemented a review process which states that new e-books or changes to existing ones can take up to five business days to gain approval, so you'll have to wait up to five business days before your e-book will be viewable in the store.

Digital Text Platform Community Support

One of the best resources for all things Kindle publishing is DTP's Community Support Forum. It's broken into 3 main sections: a general FAQ, Publisher Support, and Ask the Community. There's pretty standard forum sort of stuff in there, with a good mix of newbies and more experienced people contributing.

Amazon Author Central

Amazon Author Central is where authors are showcased. This is something new for e-book writers. While traditionally published authors have always been able to fill out their profiles here, it was only with the coming of the Kindle and then Amazon allowing anyone to sell books via the Kindle store that this area was opened to e-book authors.

Some of the things you can do on an author page include adding a personal photo and biography, you get an automatic bibliography based on the books Amazon has listed for you, and you can add an existing blog via your RSS feed or use the space to start a new one.

I was kind of hoping it would have grabbed the older posts, but oh well. Sometimes a space like this is a good for raising older posts from the dead, after all. Imagine this post will be the first to show up there.

That's it for Author Central. I tried to keep my bio short and to the point. Seemed like brevity was the best course of action. I included a link to my Twitter account as well as this web site, though Amazon does not allow HTML.

Conclusion

Whew! That's a lot of information. Hopefully you've stuck with me and seen the possibilities opening up if you've considered publishing your e-book in the Kindle store. There's no doubt this forum brings with it a major plus: the fact that millions of people every day (every hour?) might find your e-book and buy it. These are numbers that most of us just can't get on our own sites.

Next time I'll take a look at another online e-book publisher: Smashwords.com.

Book covers are important, especially in the online world where a potential reader cannot pick up, examine, or thumb through the pages. While studies have shown that a book on a three-for-two table has about one and a half seconds to catch a reader’s eye, I have to wonder if when browsing a list of books on Amazon if a reader doesn't scroll past or click on 'next' in less time than even that. Even when a book is picked up, a reader may only spend "eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover" (source: The Wall Street Journal). But, by that time, the book cover has served its purpose: it's caught the reader's eye, and he or she has picked it up.

In summary, that's why a book cover is so important. I'll take that further and say that's why a professional (and accurate) book cover is important.

In fact, he saw sales increase dramatically when he went from his own home-grown covers to ones designed by a pro.

As a potential self-publisher, I see myself as having three options with regard to book covers:

Don't use one

Create my own

Hire a professional illustrator

Let's discuss each.

1. Don't Use One

IMO, this isn't really an option, but let's at least talk about why not. We all know the old adage don't judge a book by its cover. But what about a book that doesn't have one? Do we judge it at all?

I don't.

Perhaps I'm superficial, but first and foremost I nearly always judge a book by its cover—the quality, the initial impact of the illustration, the colors. They're all important. Even more, the cover should reflect the content of the book, at least in part.

In terms of selling online in, say, the Kindle store, here is what potential readers will see if there is no image associated with your e-book:

Now, that makes does not make me want to click-through and read the book's summary.

2. Create my own

It's cheap, it's easy, but not going to win any awards. I have no illustrating or drawing talent whatsoever. But I've found an easy way to create a cover is to start with a photo. It can be your own or someone else's, but make sure if the latter that you have rights to use it.

A few places to find 'resusable media' not requiring licensing or royalties includes Wikimedia Commons, stock.xchng, and morgueFile. Always double-check the licensing on each image just to be sure.

Once you've got a basic image or photo, you'll need to fix it up a bit with the title of your book and your name at the bare minimum. I've learned it's best to keep it simple, though, especially considering that the image will be shrunk down for display on a product page. Make the font as big as possible so that when it is scaled down the words are still visible.

You don't need to buy something expensive like Adobe Photoshop, either. Check out Paint.NET. It's free and does just about everything I've ever needed.

There are a lot of designers and illustrators out there. I'll leave it up to you to search for them least it look like I'm trying to endorse one or another, which I could only do if I had personal experience with that person.

Conclusion

I was a little hesitant about writing this post, mostly because I feel it's a topic that really shouldn't require much convincing. However, here it is. Hopefully I presented my case that a professional book cover is a necessity. Next, we'll move on to the first of the online eRetailers I want to cover, Amazon.com.

From looking at the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines document, you might quickly think you need a masters degree in publishing and a whole lot of designer talent to pull this thing off (I did). Not true at all. My experience thus far has been that getting an e-book ready for publishing is really a pretty painless process. The retailers I'll be talking about in later posts accept a variety of formats, and where the expected format is proprietary (like for the Kindle), tools are provided to do the conversion.

Now, I'm not a designer in any sense of the word. So I'm not going to even try giving that sort of advice. But what I can do is point out some simple tips as well as resources that helped me format my e-book. The latter will be a running list; I'll add to it as I find new resources, and intend to use it as reference information myself.

As far as some basic guidelines, here's a few things I've run across:

1. Keep it simple

Don't go crazy with fonts, font sizes, and the general layout. Keep it simple. You want your e-book to be readable on as many devices as possible. The best first step in guaranteeing that is to not go crazy with styling.

2. Use a book cover

This one is HUGE in my opinion, mainly because I'm one of those people who uses the cover as a gauge of the overall quality of the work. Turns out coming up with a professional looking cover is not that difficult as long as you have some skills of your own or are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for a professional to work their magic. I'll touch on this subject some more in the next post in this series. For now, though, here's the cover I used for my fantasy novel, The Hall of the Wood:

3. Do have a title page

Keep it basic: the name of the book and the author's name, possibly with some artwork if you have it.

4. Do have an 'other books' page

If you have other books available, why not let your readers know about them? Remember, too, that when you do release new e-books, go back and update your previously published ones with the title of the new book. One of the nice things about electronic publishing is that it is not immutable.

5. Do have a copyright page

Some online publishers/retailers require this. It's best to explicitly declare your copyright and/or licensing. If you're a resident of the United States you're automatically covered under standard U.S. copyright law, but something I'm considering is also releasing my work under a Creative Commons license also, similar to how I protect my blog posts.

6. Do have an attribution page

Use this page to thank anyone who helped you along the way.

7. Do have an acknowledgments page

This one is optional, but if you want to include a paragraph or two thanking various people…

8. Do have a quotations page

Another optional one, but some authors like to include a short quote as a lead-in to their content.

The order of the above pages varies. Right now, I'm reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, and the order I see is: praise/quotations, other books by author, title page, copyright, dedication, an acknowledgments page, a map of Priest's vision of Seattle, an excerpt from a fictitious history text, another title page (this one with just the name of the novel), and, finally, the content.

That's it for tips, and that about wraps up this post.

I'll leave you with a short list of styling resources I've discovered:

Smashwords Style GuideMark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, wrote this free e-book on how to style your e-book prior to publishing with Smashwords. At twenty pages, it's a fairly quick read, but has some good information in it. While intended as advice for publishing with Smashwords, the information is general enough to apply regardless of where you decide to publish.

Scribd's "Preparing Your Content"Scribd is another online publisher which I'll be talking more about in this series. This forum entry has some good information about page size, fonts, and a tip I found especially useful regarding using text on your book cover image.

Amazon Kindle Publishing GuidelinesThe first so many pages of this document are a worthwhile read, but when it starts to look like Greek it's time to shut'er down and move on. Too much low level detail for me, but some good stuff early on.

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